Ranking as to what? I disagree with rankings on a general basis as they show no indication of certain programs and mislead the public that school A is better then school B. These rankings are subjective for the most part and lack objectivity-but what do you expect from a newspaper. The sad part is people and academia embrace them. I know for a fact that the University of Texas at Dallas has the top chess program in the U.S. (along with Texas tech) and objectively they would wipe the top ten schools listed in the "news" rankings off the map. However, these are teams from the "south" not the "northeast" and we would not want to "bias" the preconception that people from the south are more ignorant than the northeastern establishment-By the way I will put my money where my "mouth from the south" is..I will give $10,000 to any of the top 5 schools if their chess team can beat UT Dallas.

Posted by: Nick Paleveda MBA J.D LL.M | Sep 13, 2012 4:55:01 AM

Was that a serious post Nick? Chess team? really?

I do not disagree for one moment that the rankings are arbitrary, nor that they show a bias towards the Northern schools (and I concede this being a Penn alum, one of the schools that certainly benefits from such bias).

However, these rankings are about the overall university, not any 1 particuar program (program rankings also exist). The general consensus is that they are fairly accurate as far as putting schools into a general tier or range. Again I have to ask, were you really serious in making your point based on chess?